1. Technical Field
This invention relates to a registration system for colleges and universities in which the student calls the school on a touchtone telephone and, by interaction with the system of this invention, enrolls the student in the institution.
2. Background Art
Telephone registration systems have been proposed and adopted in the past in a number of colleges. Even after the initial bugs have been worked out, these systems have not been wholly satisfactory because (1) they have not successfully registered a sufficiently high percentage of the students who have attempted registration by telephone and (2) they apply to limited and specific aspects of registration, leaving many aspects to be accomplished manually. Even after all the effort of installing and operating conventional telephone registration systems, it is often found that only 50% of the students successfully register by telephone. This is, of course, a substantial workload that is transferred from the conventional manual registration system, but it leaves more to do than is desired.
It has been found that conventional telephone registration systems do not handle, or attempt to handle, many common situations requiring interaction between the student seeking to register and some requirement of the school. For example, many schools are required by law to require students to pay and maintain a property deposit. Such "special problems" are not now handled by telephone registration systems and are relegated to an adjunct enforcement strategy. As another example, a sizeable percentage of students are required to take a minimum number of class hours to qualify for scholarships, fellowships, research assistantships or instructorships. Present telephone registration systems are not able to monitor or enforce such regulations. Those who wish to do so may outmaneuver the system, making it necessary for the university to institute auxiliary monitoring programs. In another example, registration for certain courses in some schools require approval of a faculty member, usually a course instructor or a faculty advisor, or both. Present telephone registration systems are not able to handle this situation and either require conventional registration or are inflexible and prevent this type faculty control over classes. In this invention, many different categories of students and student problems are handled to successfully enroll students.